When comparing Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead vs Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic, the Slant community recommends Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead for most people. In the question“What are the best roguelikes/roguelites on PC?”Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead is ranked 4th while Pixel Heroes: Byte & Magic is ranked 27th. The most important reason people chose Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead is:

Get taken back to when games were completely made of ascii letters and your imagination. Venture forth as an @ and survive the wild. With the classic ascii art, it is hard to ignore that this is not a graphical powerhouse, but of course that is part of the fun, allowing your imagination to fill in this void.

Pros

Pro

Classic computer gameplay that offers a lot of nostalgia

Get taken back to when games were completely made of ascii letters and your imagination. Venture forth as an @ and survive the wild. With the classic ascii art, it is hard to ignore that this is not a graphical powerhouse, but of course that is part of the fun, allowing your imagination to fill in this void.

Pro

Super involved gameplay that allows the user to dive deep into the mechanics of the game

Everything from weather to crafting to martial arts are accounted for in Cataclysm. You can spend hours mastering the depths of this games systems that allow you to play however you want.

Pro

Open source and very moddable, making for a game that anyone can change to their liking

The mod community is pretty active on this game, and you can create some really cool things with the tools they already provide. This way anyone can change their game to how they like.

Pro

Graphics can be used instead of ASCII, for those that would enjoy something more visual

Not supported on every version of the game, but you can have a graphical experience if you want by using a graphical tileset for the game. This will need to be done manually.

Pro

Free for anyone to download and try, which leave no one out

The game is free of cost as well as open-source, meaning that anyone can download the game, install it and play it.

Pro

Being in constant active developed allows the game to constantly grow

Experimental releases exit a few times in a single day. Many people are working on finding bugs, and developers are quickly fixing them and adding new features. This makes for a situation where the game is constantly growing and improving.

Pro

Pixel perfect

Graphics and fonts are pixel perfect.

Pro

Retro look, sound & feel

Pro

Quick save

A feature that should be necessary for all mobile games, quick save allows the user to set the game down at any time by saving quickly, making for a game that can be played in plenty of short bursts without loosing any progression.

Pro

Humorous with nerd culture references

The game has a good sense of humor with many inside jokes referencing things such as Tolkien, Lovecraft as well as modern day dev. culture.

Pro

Tons of loot

Cons

Con

Lacking hardcore survival feel

The game gets to be rather easy once you spend a little time with it. Basements full of everything one needs to survive in every other house, and stores that look like they were left as seem out of place since in a disaster scenario most items would probably have been taken already.

You can tweak the options to suit a more hardcore experience if you so desire. The options allow for a wide variety of difficulty and playstyles.

Con

Difficult to learn at first

This could be a pro for some but for many this will turn them away from the game.

Con

Limited starting characters

Starting characters are limited and random, which can be frustrating, especially when the game is centered around restarting many, many times.

Con

No roguelite features

Pixel Heroes subscribes to Roguelike rules where there is zero carry over from previous playthroughs. When compared to the small amount of progression seen in Roguelites this may be a turn off for some users.

Con

Status effects overpowered

Status effects have too much of an advantage over the player, which means a focus has to be on countering them, leaving other elements to not be focused on due to being under-powered in comparison.